The House That Structure Built

Update: editing hasn't kill me. Yet. 

Neither has packing, although there was that time with the boxes of books that almost ended poorly.

Honestly, these update posts make me self conscious because I know I'm editing at the speed of a glacier. Most of my writer friends have started and finished their edits. Writers all over the blogosphere announce how happy they are to be done editing.

And still, I am revising. I'm not even done with the macro stuff yet. 

I worry there's something wrong with me. That maybe I just suck, and can't edit my way out of a paper bag, and that's just it for me. But then I kick some sense into myself, and realize it's not really me, it's the book at this point. Because sweet magnolia cupcakes, this book has a lot of things wrong with it. My rough drafts are messy to begin with, but this baby was written in ten months, starting when my son was five months old and I was carving out fifteen minutes during nap time to write a few sentences. I suppose it's no wonder there's some serious issues such as structure, tone, and voice, all the way down to the minor stuff like how I fell in love with the word "just". 

Or how I need to replot the entire thing. And kill some characters. And fix the plot holes. You know, the basics.

It's been very discouraging, because I feel like I'm taking too long. That I should be done now. It doesn't matter I only have about two hours a day, less lately since the son has decided to wake up between the hour and hour and a half mark from his nap. I've taken to staying up late a few nights to get some more time in. That lasts for a few days, and then I crash.

Lately, the moving thing, the whole let's go through our entire house worth of stuff and get rid of 50% of it so we can afford to move to Puerto Rico has cut into the writing time as well. My husband reports to work the first week of September, and now that our original plans of him staying in a friend's place for a month have changed, he has to get a place to stay a week after getting there (and staying in a hotel in the meantime). We're shipping our stuff over there a month earlier than expected.

So yeah, there's other stuff going on. But I still need to make time for writing, I still need to keep progressing even when that evil voice tells me I should just start all the way over. Again.

Because, here's the thing folks. Revision doesn't just teach you how to fix THIS book. I mean, yes, that's what you're doing when you revise. You're making the words not suck. But ideally, while you're revising, you're getting better at writing, so when the time comes to start a new rough draft, you're not making the same mistakes over and over again.

To do that, and to revise properly, you have to figure out what you did wrong the first time, and how to fix that. 

As easy as it sounds, it can be very hard. Very mentally taxing. I find drafting emotionally draining (or rejuvenating, depending on the scene in question), but revision is mentally taxing. You're picturing the book in it's entirety and thinking about what happens if you shift this scene forward. Or you're just focusing on one scene, and reading through each line for the moment where the pacing slacks off. Either way, it makes my already tired brain tired. 

So that's where I'm at, folks. I'm still editing, still toiling away. I'm making a lot of progress, don't get me wrong. I can see how each day of editing is moving me forward, and as soon as I figure out the new plot order, I can start the scene by scene stuff. But it still feels like it's taking forever and I should be done by now and I'm doomed and omg I'm just going to eat some chocolate and hide from the world. 

Then I remind myself it's taken other authors years to finish their edits, if we're going to play the compare yourself to others game, and then I don't feel so bad. 

So, sound off people. Where are you at in your writing? What do you do when it feels like it's taking too long?

Done

So I am done with the first draft of Zombie Road Trip. 

I don't feel excited yet. Mostly, I feel like a fake. That's because my endings in the first draft suck. They suck big time. They suck so much they create tiny black holes stealing all my joy. When I say I am finished, I feel like I am anything but.

It's not until a few days later do I start to feel joy at being finished. I know people talk about post-novel ennui, and for me, it comes on quick wings of loathing. Of realizing how awful the ending is, how big the plot holes are, etc etc etc...

Yes, I am a perfectionist. Most people say that with a certain amount of pride. That they demand a high quality in themselves. That IS something to be proud of, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it in small doses. But I'm not talking about spell checking something before you send it to your boss. 

I'm talking about never wanting to let anyone see something until it's "good enough". And since it will never be "good enough" in your eyes, no one ever sees anything. That's why I've written five novels and never queried one. That's why when I finish a first draft all I initially feel is despair at how awful it is.

And that why I am breaking the cycle with this book. I've let people read the first draft, warts and all, despite how much I want to crawl in a hole and die at the thought, and why after a break, I'm going to revise the crap out of this book, and then I am going to send out some queries. 

In the meantime, I am going to be celebrating and telling everyone who will listen that I am DONE with this draft.   

EDITED TO ADD: My friend Liz has advised me that I can improve my crappy ending by adding: AND THEN THEY ALL DIED. THE END.

Or if I was feeling optimistic: AND THEN THEY HAD SEX.

I think I am going with: AND THEN THEY SAVED THE WORLD AND EVERYONE WAS HAPPY AND GOT KICK BUTT AGENTS AND AWESOME BOOK DEALS.

THE END.

Birth of a Novel: The (Not) Birthday Edition

Last Thursday I was going to write a Birth of a Novel post, and call it the birthday edition. Because January third is my birthday, naturally.

But, life had other plans, and it's a week later. The baby and the husband were both sick, and there was one night where the baby didn't sleep at all. We're talking crying out in his sleep from ten until two when I got him up, to being awake from two until five when he passed out from exhaustion.

Then he woke up at eight in the morning.

Yes. I was miserable. The very limits of my patience were tested and exceeded. Parenting: not for the weak of heart. 

I got him to go back to sleep until eleven, and I spent the day on the couch staring at the TV, counting down to nap time. 

Couple this with being very stuck on my book, and I don't have a lot of progress to report on my word count. I did sit down yesterday, after sleeping great for the last two nights, and hammer out some brainstorming.

See, the thing is, the book has veered wildly off course. I have ideas of characters and plot threads to put into the book, but they're not there yet. Things are very different, and I am having a hard time building up to the climax when the beginning and the middle of the book don't really match up. 

I read this post by Laini Taylor today that made me feel much better. Most of my panic is because I don't know what happens next. It makes me very comfortable. The book feels like it's coming apart at the seams and I have no idea what to build towards.

I have to remember that a lot of writing comes from faith. You have to believe in yourself; in your ability to spin something out of nothing. I made everything up--all the characters, the plot events, the setting. All of it. It came from my brain.

Sometimes, you have to trust your brain to come up with stuff later. You might not have the answer right away, and that's scary. But that's okay. The answer will come.

I'm not sitting and waiting for inspiration. Yesterday's brainstorming session was very productive, so today I am going to try and re-outline the rest of the book. 

If you build it, they will come.

So remember. Trust your brain.

How about you? How's the book coming along? What about the rest of your plans?

Novelist Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia looks like it's spelled wrong, even though Google assures me it's correct. I for one am not going to question our Google overlords, so let's just go with it.

I'm in that weird place where I swing wildly back and forth between positive affirmations for my novel, to soul sucking despair. When you're doing any sort of serious editing, there's really no in between. You either sit down happy to put words to the page, or the minute you open Scrivener, you think of a million other things that have to be done right now.

I have the attention span of a hamster at the moment, so that just makes it worse. There are so many things I mean to do and forget to until I am in the middle of something else. These things range in importance from clipping a hang nail to paying a bill, so when I remember stuff while writing, the urge to take care of this other thing gets really strong. Unlike rocking my son to sleep, I can actually get up from the computer.

If I was a normal person, I could simply write this stuff down in a list and take care of it after I am finished writing. But depending on what I remembered, it turns into an itch that won't go away until I scratch it. Like that hang nail. I wish I was kidding, but it really bothers me when there's a catch on my nail. It bothers me so much that as I am writing, this is what is going through my mind:

"I really need to show how scary this zombie is...that hang nail won't go away."

*picks at the nail. It only makes the catch deeper*

"I really have to remember to cut it the next time I get up to pee. Back to the scene. But what if I forget? I keep forgetting to cut this darn thing and it's really starting to get on my nerves."

*bites nail. It only makes the nail ragged and gross looking*

"Damn, that's not any better. Now it's really going to bother me. Maybe I should just get up and cut it. No. The last time I did that, I got distracted and mopped the kitchen floor, made a sammich, and then remembered about the writing. Then I sat down and had to pee. No, I am just going to ignore the ragged nail and keep typing. Zombies. Think about the zombies."

So I think about the zombies for a little while, but the pressure to get up and cut the nail increases until it's like a klaxon in my brain...

"YOU HAVE A HANG NAIL IT WON'T GO AWAY OMG YOU NEED TO CUT IT THE HANG NAIL IT'S JAGGED AND GROSS AND YOU NEED TO CUT IT."

In the case of the hang nail, I gave in and cut it (I am sure there's a diagnosis and/or medication for people like me, but I prefer to just blame it on being really tired for about nine months now (But Liz, you say, your kid is only six months old, how can you be tired for longer than he's been alive? To which I say, thank you hypothetical person, for asking and noticing how old my kid is. Also, you don't sleep that last trimester of pregnancy. You're so big by that point that when you lay down, the baby sort of pushes up on your ribs and lungs, and mine decided that kicking was a fun way to past the time at night. So there's the other three months accounted for.)).

Now I've lost my train of thought, and I keep staring at the periods and parenthesis wondering if I have enough of them and they are properly placed. So we're moving on now.

For other stuff I just have to ignore it and keep writing. It's harder when the writing feels like crap, and it's pointless, and it's never going to get better and I am never going to amount to anything and everyone is going to be so disappointed I am going to have to physically move away even though this is the Internet and global warming is probably my fault too.

But seriously, you just have to buckle down and write. Even when you feel like it's crap, writing can be like a parachute. Writer's block? Write some words. Feel like it's all pointless? Keep writing, and eventually it will feel pointy again. Don't know what happens next? Write some words and make it up as you go along. Bored with the book in general?

THAT'S WHEN YOU MAKE THINGS GO BOOM.

You write some words, but man, add in something awesome. A nuclear-virus bomb explodes in Washington. Add a llama. Force feed a character with a nut allergy some peanut butter. Shake things up.  

Above all, when you have a million voices in your head chiming in about your novel, only listen to the nice ones.

The rest of them can take a hike.

So, what do you do to quell the voices? Besides medication, I mean. 

The Edits are Coming!

Editing is something I have talked about before, and I suspect I will be posting about it again.

Mostly because it's such an integral part of the writing process. I by no means think that everyone should edit the same way as me (I don't even use the same process over and over, but rather try new things with each book) but in case this gives people some ideas, I am going to give you a quick run down of some of the things I am doing to whip this book into shape: 

*(Cribbed this idea from Sol Stein in "Stein on Writing") Before re-reading the book, sit down and write down what the most memorable scene is. Chances are you haven't read this book in a few weeks or more. Figure out which one sticks out most in your mind and why. Is it an epic battle? A quiet moment of tenderness?

*Now figure out the least memorable scene. I usually have to flip through the book in order to figure out which scene I totally forgot about. It's usually a filler scene where the characters are just talking at each other. Now compare the boring scenes with the exciting one and figure out how you can improve the boring scene. If you can't, chances are you need to cut this scene.

*After that, I go through the entire book with a fine tooth comb. I have some paper next to me, and make notes on every single place that needs attention. Each place the character does something out of character, the worldbuilding falls apart, where the pacing slacks off or the story logic falls apart.


*Note cards. They are your friend. I take a pack of note cards and do a scene for each note card. This really helps me look at the entire book as a whole. It's your book in miniature form. If the scene is boring or I need to add to it I make notes on the note card. I can also play around with the story arc and see if I have any glaring plot holes. 

*Save the Cat Beat Sheet. Liz posted her rendition of Blake Synder's Save the Cat Beat Sheet in Excel, and boy has it saved my bacon with this book (alliteration!). I have two major subplots and a minor one in addition to the regular plot of the book. That's a lot of threads to keep track of. And sometimes I think it's enough threads to hang myself with! So this Beat Sheet is a real lifesaver. Basically it's a way to track your major plot events and shore up the book's internal structure.


*Lots of caffeine and chocolate. Enough said.


*Lots of thinking time. In an effort not to work myself into oblivion like last time, I am making sure I taking things slow and try not to push too hard. I am still working my butt off, but instead of revising every single spare second of the day, I make sure I spend some time with my friends and family.


This isn't a complete list (I haven't even begun to line edit) but this is as far as I have gotten. Since a good 50% of this book is going to be rewritten, I figure I'll blog as I progress through the process. 


Wish me lots of luck. And share! How do you approach a massive rewrite? How do you stay sane?

Protect the Happy

Bunny brought to you by Free Digital Pictures

Going on a bit of a rant today, but it's something I think we all need to hear. Also, disclaimer: this is just my opinion. Your mileage may vary. 

Life is a funny, fickle mistress. I have a great life. I am relatively healthy. I have a great family and a wonderful husband. I have a job, and I am able to pay all my bills (on time no less!). I have my own office, and bookshelves full of books.

Life is good.

But I have realized that the state of your happiness is dependent upon your personal mind set. This feels counter intutive. It feels like once you achieve XYZ you will be happy for ever and ever. But this is not so. 

I distinctly remember figuring this little nugget out. I was sitting in my car, in the parking lot of my first ever "real" job, and talking to my best friend on the phone. We were discussing a mutual acquaintance. We couldn't figure it out. No matter what happened in this woman's life, she was never happy. Never satisfied. Always had a reason to complain.

This bunny knows happiness is just a hop away.

You've met people like that, I am sure. They especially like to hang out at gas stations in the lotto line, for some reason. Draining to be around, a black hole of energy. Energy vampires, not the sparkly kind either.

So while talking to my friend, we both came the realization that being happy isn't the fallout of a perceived event, even though things can make you happy. You graduate college, you're a happy camper. You get married, happy too (right??). But are you really going to wait around for a big milestone in your life to make you happy?
 

I hope not. I hope people can look at the good things they have in their life, and be overjoyed about it. There's always something to be happy about, and there's always something that can disturb this happiness. Some events are bigger than others, like I realized yesterday.

Like I said, life is good. I am cruising along, happy as a calm, and BAMN! Major stressor. Huge source of stress. I won't go into details because this is teh Internets (relax, I am not dying. Still healthy. It was a personal life related thing dealing with my family.)

So I did what I do best (not eat chocolate!) and started to worry. Man, I am good at worrying. I mean, Olympic Gold Medalist class worrier. In high school I almost gave myself an ulcer worrying about tests, conversations, big events. It was my default state of being, a near panic that made it hard to eat and sleep. 

I mostly have the worrying thing under control, once I realized that no matter how much I worried (or "planned" is what I called it, "If she says this, then I will say that." "If I flunk this test, I will sell myself to a goat shepherd in the Andes.") I still couldn't predict how I would respond to the event I was worrying about.

Worried that you're going to fail a test? That sucks, but once you fail the test, your emotional response lasts for a few seconds, and then you're on to damage control. 

Last night while trying to sleep, I reminded myself of all this nifty things that I learned. No matter how much I worried, I literally couldn't do anything to change the outcome. We just play the waiting game. Naturally this resulted in my vacillating between sleepy contentment and blind panic, but hey! One day at a time, right?

Because it comes to down this: protect your happiness. Seriously. Arm yourself to the teeth--to the gills if you have them, for my fishy followers--and you protect your happiness! There is always something to panic about. To worry about. To feel bad about. I am not saying that worry won't win the day sometimes, especially if the worry is major stuff like surgery and life threatening illness. I am not saying you're a bad person if you feel sad. Not the case!

Worry-wort Bunny worries.

I far from have this "Don't worry, be happy" stuff down pat, if last night was any indication. I just wanted to share my thoughts about this with you guys, because writing isn't exactly for the faint of heart. Querying can suck the life out of you, and then you get an agent (yay!) but then agent edits (boo! hiss!) and then you go on submission (yay!) and then editor edits (boo! hiss!). You might not sell the book, or it might get published but everyone hates it.

It's a veritable cornucopia of worry and stress that will turn you into a ball of anxiety. So you have to be proactive about your happiness. You have to go after happiness with a big stick and straight club it upside the head. Waiting for things to make you happy will make you miserable. Because that event last only so long, and then you're back to waiting again.

This bunny has wisely armed himself with some lettuce.

And who likes to wait? Why not be happy right now?! (I got so excited I used an exclamation point AND a question mark! The horror!)

Two things that help protect the happy:

1. Think about all the awesome stuff you have going. 

It's really hard to be upset and worrying when you're thinking about how awesome that book you're writing is. Or when you think about how much you love your spouse/parent/sister/brother/goldfish. You have to really be happy about your awesome stuff though. Not a mentally checking off, "Yeah yeah, health and family members, blah blah, yay for them." Focus on how much you love spouse/parent/sister/brother/goldfish and let that take over the worry.

If you are single and you don't love anyone, not even your pet bunny, and you're homeless, and sick with all sorts of diseases and have made your way to my blog about writing and life and the writing life anyway, welcome! You can be happy about your favorite soup kitchen, and maybe that other homeless guy that lets you borrow his tarp.

You don't love Mr. Floppy?

2. Think about how it could be worse. 

It could be worse. Much worse. We're writers, so we KNOW how things can be worse, since we regularly do awful stuff to our characters. I have a confession, and this is so stupid and silly, but whenever I get really upset, I think about how I am not in a hostage situation. It's true. I think about how even though I am worried about money, or health, or a person, it could be worse. I could be stuck in a gas station with a crazed gunman waving a gun around. It's silly, but it usually helps calm me down. "Okay, yeah. We're eating beans and rice for a week, but no one is robbing me at gunpoint! Thank goodness!"

So there. Some weapons to protect the happy with. I am sure today's post has revealed my not-really-a-secret that I am a optimist, but that's okay. I trust you guys.

Chime in if you have strategies to keep the worry away. What do YOU do to protect your happy? We could train each other in the Art of Happiness War, and become like...Happiness Ninjas. We could be called the Happiness Harpies. No, maybe Harpoons. Hmmm, the name needs work, but we could make an ARMY of happy happy people.

I for one, am off to work on my book which is going fabulously, by the way. It's time to torture some characters, because well...doo doo rolls downhill.

*the rest of the bunnies were brought to you by Wikicommons. Aren't they adorable? They could be like, mascots or something. Ninjas have mascots, right?

 

Things to Do While Writing a Book

We've all been there. Writing a book. Somehow, the place between "OMG I HAVE THE BESTEST IDEA EVAR!" and "Yay the book is done!" isn't as filled with sunshine and puppies as we have initially been lead to believe.

I am lucky, in that my book still feels new and shiny, even though I am rewriting scenes I've written before (I just really like this idea, okay? That or I am a narcissist. Perhaps both.). But you still have to keep your eyes open, least the demons of "This is garbage and I am writing something else. Something about unicorns." show up unexpectedly.


So you need a plan. A goal. A battle cry. Something to keep yourself going through the long haul of starting and finishing a book. Because ladies and gentleman? That's a big cavernous place right there. That gulf between "I started writing a book" and "I've finished writing a book" separates a lot of would be authors. I have lost track of how many people have told me, upon hearing that I write, that they've always wanted to write a book. Some even say, "I started writing a book, but got bored."


There's nothing wrong with starting and stopping a book. Goodness knows I've done it a bazillion times. Experimenting and breaking things is part of the writing process. But if you ever want to advance and get to the Revision level, and the Querying level, and the Bargaining Away Unnecessary Organs for a Chance of Publication level you need to finish the book.


So here's some tricks for doing just that (finishing the book, not bargaining away unnecessary organs. You're on your own there).


1. Bribe yourself. With chocolate, new books, new toys, a new car, whatever. Reward yourself, and frequently.


2. Set frequent goals. This gives you the illusion of progress. Goals can range from "Finish this chapter tonight" to "Kidnap Charlie Sheen to force him to endorse your book". Once you complete this goal, you feel good about yourself. It gives you the strength to move on.


3. Keep a schedule. If 3 in the morning under the light of the moon is your writing time, stick to it, even if the raccoons are talking about you behind your back.

4. Play games. If you're stalling out on what happens next, or a character is losing their luster, play a game with yourself. Ask What if my main character turned into a small flightless bird? What if the story isn't really set in a desert, but in outer space? What if this is all just a dream (smack yourself for that one). 


5. Blow some stuff up. Kill a character. Cripple a character. Give the character leprosy and watch as his friends think he's a zombie and try to shoot him "for his own good." Stake up the status quo in your plot, and take no prisoners. 


6. Combine any and all of the above. Maybe while writing by the light of the moon, you set the goal to tie up those nasty raccoons and milk them for life experiences. Or reward yourself with a new flat screen TV if you can successfully get Charlie Sheen to pretend to be the character with leprosy. Add in a bag of popcorn if Sheen pitches this to a movie producer, and it gets the green light. Or you could buy a book once you've gotten past the swampy middle of the book, and managed to kill all but the main characters. You know, that or the Charlie Sheen thing.


The point here is to keep going. Stay interested in the book, and show those raccoons what for. 


What do you do while writing a book to keep going? Anything extreme like nailing yourself to the chair, or you know, discipline could work too.

It's the End of the World As We Know It (I Feel Fine)

Go ahead and play that R.E.M. song up there...it's an excellent anthem, especially for a Friday. So after a long, gruelling morning wrestling with my current work in progress, I have officially come to the conclusion that I am done with the first draft.

I know, it sounds odd to not really know if I am done with the first draft yet or not. But this book has been...shall we say, a problem child. I've had three false starts, and one major stall in the middle. The book is now a Frankenstein book, where there are tangents that need to be cut, scenes that are missing, and a whole lot of steps in the middle that I had to skip out of necessity. Confused yet? I was this morning!

I was going to write some of those missing scenes, but in order to know the context (Is this before or after she discovered the secret plot? After she found out the Big Secret?), I would have to know exactly what happened in the beginning. The beginning of the book is where some of the biggest changes were made, and I have lost all manner of objectivity with this first draft. So I decided that this will be a good place to stop tinkering with the first draft, and just call it done. I will have plenty of time to find my plot holes in revision. It feels really anticlimactic to write a book like this. There's no clear "Okay, I wrote the end. Now I am done, huzzah!" to it. But I am come as far as I can with this first draft. The next step would be to start tearing the book apart and figuring out what to cut and what to keep.

Hey guys, anyone want to do "Swan Lake"?

And that is very clearly revision. So hence my decision to call it done.

I am tired, too. I've been working hard on this book since December, and working hard on first drafts since October. Before that, I was working hard with developing these two projects. In between my own work, I'd also beta read four plus books. So yeah, tired.

Playing Guitar Hero with my twin brother yesterday, and reading the awesome comments on the post really put some things into perspective for me. When all you do is go to the day job and write, with very few things in between, writing can feel like an all consuming task. You loose some perspective on it, because it's all you're doing. A rejection feels like the end of the world. A stalled scene feels like utter failure.

But it's not. It's business as usual. Sure, this first draft is a hot mess, but that's no big deal. I can fix it, it's not completely broken. I have as long as I need to make it the best book I know it can be. So do you.

So after a week of hard posts, let's all take a collective sigh. It's going to be okay--really it is. It feels like a world changing problem, but it's not.

Do something fun this weekend! Shake things up! Paint the dog! Bathe the cat! Get lost on purpose!

And then come tell us about the fun you had.

What do you like to do for fun? 

I would so go walking there if I could right now.

*thank you, Free Digital Pictures for making this post prettier.

Common First Draft Misfires

Remember when I posted about finishing your book?

I am back today with gusto. Because I really want all of you to finish your books. Myself included.

Despite what your muse/creativity might tell you, jumping from book to book to book like stones in a river is NOT the way to a career in writing. As I alluded to in my last post, I used to play this book hop-skip-jumping in high school all the time. And guess what? I never finished a single book ever. This was before I spent time on the Internet, so I didn't know better.

The logic is that you will return to your half finished manuscript when your interest returns. But that almost never happens. Really. You get so caught up in this new idea you forget about the old one. Plus, even if you miraculously figure out how to jump start your half finished manuscript, going back is hard. The characters feel between slightly foreign to complete strangers depending on the amount of time you spent away. You can't quite remember where you were going with the plot. If you didn't take any notes, it might be impossible to remember why you even started the book in the first place.

Your Muse is out to lunch today. Tomorrow's not looking too good either.

It's tempting to jump ship with the waters get rough. I know. I am half way through the rough draft, and it's soooooo hard to keep going. I have no idea why it's hard, and it's really annoying. I logically know the only way to finish a book is to...keep writing it. But for some reason the book feels old, it feels like a big pile of steaming garbage, it feels like the worst thing ever written in the history of ever (yes, my muse likes to be really dramatic).

But guess what? Even though in the middle of the book you feel like it's awful, it's not. I mean sure, it's still a rough draft, and depending on how messy your drafts turn out the book could be covered in warts and have three heads (*coughcough*like mine for example). But there is still something there. Something worth keeping. I know this for a fact because I started writing a book a few months ago, and I started to hate it. It might have been the timing--holidays and moving--but I was utterly convinced this book needed to be kicked to the curb.

Except the other night I read the 20,000 words I had on it already, and I was happy to find it doesn't suck. It's still rough, but I even made myself laugh a few times (that probably sounds really narcissistic, but if I am not laughing the readers certainly aren't). I was disappointed when I got to the end of what I had written. Best of all, I want to continue, so that's what I am writing after this WIP (after a short break). This is empirical proof that despite your anxiety, your book isn't totally worthless.

Writing isn't always sunshine and rainbows, but if you try the first solution to the writing doldrums (Just keep writing and push through it) and you still want to set your book on fire and dance on the ashes, you might have another problem at hand, and this malaise is your muse's way of letting you know. 

Most of the time this is what starting a book feels like.

Common First Draft Misfires:

*Your main character is underdeveloped. You haven't thought too much beyond age, name, and physical description for your character. Now you've run out of steam and feel uncertain about what your character would do next. 


The remedy for this is to develop your character a little bit. I said a little! Don't dash off and fill out three bajillion character sheets. Just ask a few important questions. I like Holly Lisle's Create a Character Clinic for this reason. It has a series of questions to ask your character rather than a laundry list of traits. Important things like "What is the one thing in the world you regret most, and what have you done to prevent that from happening again?" Just do enough to get your creativity flowing again, and go back to writing.


*Your main character is too developed. You've come up with a brilliant idea that could change everything, but the character you built before you wrote the book wouldn't do that. Now you're fighting with the character you want them to be versus the character the book needs.

The remedy to this is painful: forget about the ten pages of information on the character you already have. Be flexible with the character and allow them to grow with the story. Your plot will thank you for it.

*Your main character made the wrong choice. This is hard to explain, but go with me on this one. Back up to the place where the writing started to feel like you were trying to suck your eyeballs out of your head via straw. You might have to back up further than that, depending on how much you pay attention to your writerly intuition. In one of these scenes, someone did something out of character. The spunky heroine dropped a line of acid.  The villain let the hero live, because you couldn't figure out how to get your hero out of trouble, and it wasn't time for him to die yet. 


It could be something small. It could be something big. Either way, your story zigged where it should have zagged. Another way of diagnosing the problem is look for when you took the easy way of out of scene. Back to the gun example: Your villain has your hero backed up into a corner with a gun in his face. Your villain is the type who would just shoot the guy. We've seen this in movies so many times, I think we're brainwashed into thinking it's OK for the villain to pause for the three minutes it takes for backup to arrive. Or for the villain to let the hero off with a warning. 

While the rest of us at home are screaming, "Just shoot him!" Well, I am. I don't know about you. The problem is you put the hero into a corner and you couldn't immediately think of a way to get him out, so you just let the villain let him go. If you find a scene where you were lazy, and bent the laws of plot logic, that's probably your culprit. 

(And now I feel like a hypocrite because in the current WIP I actually have a scene where the villain has the heroine at his mercy, and he lets her go. But I actually showed that it's in the villain's character to do such a thing because of their shared back story. Hopefully this makes sense. If not, my beta readers are going to nail me to the wall.)

*Worldbuilding: You've hit a wall in your personal knowledge. Your character has to do something in an area you know nothing about, like diffuse a bomb. It happens. Writing a scene about something you know nothing about is grueling. If it's a one time deal, you can often skip the technical details, and move on with the story ("George doesn't explode, and heads home." End scene). Later, during revision, you do your research and insert the proper details into the scene.

Insert Tab A into Slot B...that's how you diffuse a bomb, right?

However, if the problem pops up again and again, you might not know your setting well enough. Fantasy and Science Fiction authors especially have problems with this, since we're making worlds up from scratch, but the rest of you aren't immune. You might be restricting your scenes to only the places you feel the most comfortable with. Or you might be flubbing the magic system because you haven't developed the details yet. 

 If this is the case, research/make up the details you need to move forward and NOTHING ELSE. Seriously, I will come kick your butt if you abuse this power. :D The object is to get enough information to write the scene and move on. Yes, move on. Do not get on the Wikipedia carousel for the entire day telling yourself it's research. It's not research at this point, but procrastination.  

It is a many splendored carousel indeed.

*Your plot is overdeveloped: A similar malady to having over developed characters. You know absolutely everything that is about to happen. The very thought of writing these scenes bores you to tears. Your muse is thinking "I already know what happens. I'm out."


This is especially problematic if you're writing something highly structured, like a mystery or police procedural. For those of you who aren't writing something like that, I say hide your note cards and forget about what is supposed to happen next. Brainstorm what could happen next based on what has already happened. Force yourself to get creative again, and who knows what awesome ideas you could have? Repeat after me: I am not chained to my outline.


But what if you are? What if you are writing a mystery where you know Alfred did it, because he was sick of cleaning up after Bruce Wayne's weekly benders? You've already laid out all of the clues and foreshadowing to signal the ending, you can't just change things mid course.


But you can! You're the writer, by golly, and the creator of the book. Give yourself the freedom to let the murderer be whoever you might come up with. You've (hopefully) come up with several plausible suspects. What if one of them actually did it? And framed poor Alfred? Remember, you don't have to get this right the first time around. You can decide Robin killed Bruce in a fit of rage because his tight pants cut off his circulation half way through the book, and write the end as though this is how it's always been. In revision you simply go back and make the clues match up with Robin, not Alfred. No one ever has to know you changed it. 

No one ever has to know what happens under the cover of darkness.

*Your plot is underdeveloped. Again, related to not knowing enough about your world or characters. Making stuff up as you go along is super fun, but I always seem to lose steam and interest half way through. Not to step on the toes of the pansters--carry on as your process tells you--but maybe now's the time to start figuring out where this train is heading. Even if you just plan out the next scene or two, it does wonders to your creativity if you have a goal to hit. 


Or you did plot things out, but you left big, fuzzy, I-will-worry-about-that-when-I-get-there places. That's fine too. But now is the time to sit down and figure out how the character is getting from Point A to Point Z. Again, the point is to not take days plotting the rest of the book out, but just enough to renew your interest again. 


*Pressure: While deadlines, self imposed or otherwise, are find and dandy, you might be pressuring yourself too much. You might feel like you have to finishthisbookrightnow. That sort of pressure isn't the best for writing. If it's a self imposed deadline, cut yourself some slack. Slash your word count goals in half. Extend your deadline. Whatever it takes so you don't feel like you have to be done with the book three days ago.


If the deadline isn't self imposed, then try to give yourself some breathing room. If you haven't already, figure out how much you need to write, and by when. Forcing yourself to churn out 12,000 words each day is going to burn you out, quick. Even if it feels like a waste of time, make sure you give yourself some mental space. Take a walk. Watch a movie. Do something to give your brain a break.

Your brain will thank you.

Whatever the problem is, the point is to diagnose the issue and then treat until effective. You don't take antibiotics while you're perfectly healthy, and you shouldn't be researching and worldbuilding and plotting when you're excited about your book again. You should be writing it.


The last ditch method I have is a powerful one, so I don't recommend using it unless you have gone through the rest of the items on this list without luck. No, really. Go through the list, don't just tell yourself your worldbuilding is fine. Think of this as the "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass" tool.


*Time Off. Yes, it's very scary. Do not use this tool unless you really have no other choice. Remember how I told you I hated my last WIP? I wasn't exaggerating. I was so fed up with the characters, the world, the story...it wasn't just insecurity and anxiety. I really thought I would have to do a total rewrite on that book to get it to where it needed to be. 


Even though I am adamantly, wholeheartedly telling you to NOT bounce from story to story, there might still come a time where you need to give yourself some space. Start small, with a day or two.  If that doesn't fix the problem, go to the Compromise, or as I like to think of it, "Tricking Your Muse".

Look at your schedule for your current WIP. Let's say like me, you write every day before work (actually, I am one of those obsessive types where I spend most of my free time writing, especially now that I am actively working on a book).  Allot yourself one day to work on something else, guilt free. I read about the idea for the Busman's Holiday here, and tried it when I was really stuck on a novel. 


Surprisingly, it worked. Something about allowing myself to write what I really wanted to, and not chaining myself to a sinking ship reopened my creativity. I also find that when I allow myself to work on another project, my interest in the current WIP is renewed. Most of the time I don't actually start writing another book, but merely do some worldbuilding or developing that shiny new idea before my interest in the current work in progress returns. I also don't stick to the Busman's Holiday religiously if my interest in the current project is still going strong.

Again, the caveat here is you are still working on your WIP. We WANT to finish our books. Give yourself one day to work on something else, but then get back to work on your current project. This is not an excuse to bounce to another idea and allow it to take up more time then it's allowed to. I find starting a second book is just too much temptation to abandon ship on the current book, so I usually restrict the Busman's Holiday to fleshing out shiny new ideas and worldbuilding for future projects. It's like a mini-vacation from my current book. 


Your last ditch effort is take a break from your book. This is time off, only more than a day or two. Again, don't use this option unless you've tried everything else. It's really easy to think that if you just leave the book alone for a few weeks you'll think of something clever, but you won't. We've ALL been seduced by chasing Shiny New Ideas. We've all thought it would be the best use of our time to just work on what was actively engaging at the time. 

But it's not. Writers write books. It's what we do. A half finished manuscript isn't a book, it's just half done. You wouldn't serve your party guests a half baked cake and call it cake. Before you can do anything meaningful with your book--revise it, query agents, sell it to publishers--it has to be finished. 


So go forth and finish your book!

It Never Fails

It never fails. 

Every time I start working on a book, I get an idea for a shiny new book. Seriously, every time. If I ever need a great idea for a book, all I have to do it start working on a book and throw myself into it. Soon afterward a great idea will follow. I think my muse is contrarary.

Speaking of The Book, it's going slowly. I am adjusting to doing things by the seat of my pants, so this means a lot of stops and starts while I work on motivation and depth, and then write the next scenes. I was floundering for a little while until I found this awesome blog: Plot to Punctuation. Mr. Black's posts are short, sweet, and packed full of great information. I especially enjoyed his posts on Why Stakes Work, Five Steps to Building a Believable Character Arc, and Making Good Choices for Your Characters. 

He's also a book doctor, if you're looking for someone with experience to evaluate your work before you send it off to agents or publishing houses.

I want to highlight one post in particular: Why Smart Characters Make Dumb Mistakes . This isn't talking about avoiding making stupid decisions for your characters because the plot demands it (that's Making Good Choices for Your Characters). This is talking about HOW to make that happen in a believable context. How cool is that? Sometimes we need our characters to mess up, but it's hard to do that in a realistic fashion after you've spent your time making them appear smart.


In other business, I am hosting a blogfest on January 25th! The topic is a unique birthday. Tessa Conte is also hosting a birthday blogfest, so if you why not check that one out too?


Now it's back to the book. I hope you're all doing well with your New Year's Resolutions.

Entering the Bubble

I have entered the "I am in the middle of writing a book" bubble.

The real world feels slightly surreal because I have been living in WIP land for a while. It takes me longer to process what people are telling me. 

Normally while writing a book I turn into a hermit, and refrain from reading, interneting (yes I just made that verb up), and doing anything else with other words. It's not that I think it will kill the book mojo, it's just that I usually don't want to process other people's words while I am thinking of my own.

BUT! I have a blog and Internet friends to maintain. And sometimes it's good to come up for air.

So while I don't have a post fraught with witticisms for you today, I do have this lovely post by Janice Hardy. It's a little test to see if you're too nice to your characters. It made me laugh out loud. If you've never read her blog, I seriously recommend it.

Living with Nice Writing Syndrome

How do you handle real life while you write? Do you sequester yourself into a dark cave? Or do you carry on business as usual?

Plontsing

What's that? Yes, I did make up a new word for my writing process thank you very much. Actually, Joe Selby first mentioned it, but I changed the spelling a bit. 

It's a hybrid of plotting and pansting. I know, it sounds like I am being overly nit picky. After all, any amount of plotting should place me in the plotting camp right?

Not exactly. Most of the time when you plot the book out you have detailed character bios, extensive worldbuilding, and ten or more plot events. You know the minor subplots and how the character gets not just from Point A to Point Z, but from B, C, D, and E. 

You have a plan, in other words.

On the other side of the camp are your pansters. They might have a vague idea about characters, and what the plot might possibly be about, and where it could be set, but they might not really have a clue either. They make it up as they go along.

I am sitting somewhere in the middle. I have a little background information, more so than most pansters have, but I have no idea how my characters are going to get from one point to another. As I stated in a previous post, I mostly write until I don't know what happens, and then I brainstorm what could happen based on what I just wrote.

It's interesting to write this way, but it's a lot messier than I am used to.  Overall I think it's working very well, and I will probably use this method in the future. The only bad thing about it is when you get a great idea for the plot, but it completely rearranges what you've already written.

In which case you can normally just pretend that's how the book was already written and fix it in revision. This time however changed two of the character's roles and jobs, so I went back and wrote some opening scenes to get a feel for the characters. 

I could blame that on not plotting things out ahead of time, but it wouldn't be true. I've had the book perfectly plotted but when I got to the end, the antagonist did something that completely changed everything that came before. That was an instance I did pretend that's how I always meant for it to happen and just moved forward. 

So how are your books coming along? Well? Train wrecks have looked better? Are you all ready for the holidays?

Critical Writing Skills: Check Your Gut

Today, amidst the panic of Week Two for NaNo, I am going to blog about a topic that is important to all writers.


I usually refer to it as a "gut feeling" but I've heard it called listening to your Muse, or following your intuition. Whatever you call it, every writer has it.


Your gut feeling is there from the entire process of having an idea to editing. You just "know" things about your book, that can't be explained. Certain things just seem right and wrong. If someone were to tell you to make your main character a squid, you would feel in your gut that your main character isn't supposed to be a squid; she's a human girl.

Sometimes the choices you make for your book are logical ones. The setting is often a logical choice depending on your conflict. If you want to write a high seas adventure, then writing aboard a ship on the ocean is a logical choice.

But sometimes we make choices for our novel that are neither logical nor based on novel-intuition. They are just assumptions we make when we develop the idea. Sometimes these assumptions are fine, but if you haven't sufficiently thought through these assumptions they can cause real problems, the very least of which becoming parts of your book that sort of bore you.


I was in that place two days ago. I was feeling restless and bored. My gut was telling me something was seriously off. Not a good place while trying to write. In the past, I just wrote past those feelings, and had some serious issues to work through in revision. Normally those feelings crop up when I have something fundamental off about the book. So despite the pressure to continue, I stopped and took inventory of what I had so far. 

Taking inventory really isn't such a bad thing while writing a novel. Sometimes mid-novel your idea of the characters or plot or setting changes. You can either panic and run around the room (did that) or you can sit down and brainstorm all the elements of the novel you love, and how to incorporate them into your novel better (did that). My gut was telling me something was off. It was my job to figure out what.


How did I do that?


I questioned everything. Not just half halfheartedly going through the characters, plot, and setting, assuming everything is okay. You can't expect the problem to just jump out at you. If it was that obvious you would have fixed it already, right? 


Your problem will normally be something you didn't stop to consider when you were plotting your novel (or just threw out there, for you pantsers). 


I even went so far as to consider throwing out my conflict. Yes, ladies and gentleman, 21,ooo thousand words in and I actually considered throwing out my conflict. I just wasn't sure anymore that the conflict fit what I really wanted to write. When I first thought of the book idea I am writing now, the characters and plot were much different. Sometimes it's hard to let go of how things used to be. So I sat there, with my list of notes of elements that I loved about my book, and figured out how to best showcase that.


Turns out the conflict is still the best choice. But if I had thought of a better one I would have changed it in a New York Minute. I just needed to refocus the conflict so I am writing the scenes I actually care about, and not where the conflict was taking me initially.

Next I checked my characters. I talked with my friend Lena, and discovered while there was plenty of interaction between my two female main characters and their possible love interests, there was little to none between the two main characters. It gave the story a disjointed feeling, like I was writing two mini books. This fix was pretty easy. I didn't have to change the characters, just add some history in their backstory. 


This time around I lucked out, and most of the fixes I made were minor in nature. My plot, setting, and characters are still mostly intact, only now I am writing scenes with life in them.


Learning to listen to your novel-intuition is not for the faint-hearted. You have to be very careful--and confident--that it's actually your gut feeling telling you something is off about the novel, and it's not your self-doubt trying to sabotage you. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices when you realize what the problem is. If I had realized the conflict didn't fit the story I wanted to tell, I would have had a lot of work ahead of me.

For those of you who haven't made a radical change in your story mid-novel before, the technique is called Pretend You Got It Right the First Time. For example, I wrote a book where a villain threatened to release a DVD of people who were pretending to be normal humans changing into werewolves. I never actually planned on him releasing the DVD (I know, rookie mistake) but I got to the point in the novel where I realize there was no good reason (other than it totally destroyed the rest of my plot) that he WOULDN'T release the DVD. So he did. In this case, you DON'T throw away what you've already written and start over. You'll never finish a book that way. You just keep writing as though this is how it's been all along. Then in revision, you make the necessary changes to the earlier scenes.


Sometimes you DO have to chuck what you've already written. If I had decided the main characters needs a complete overhaul, the setting had to go, and the conflict was crappy, I might have tossed what I had already written. But you should make sure that's what you HAVE to do, and not your self-doubt talking. Your job as a writer is to finish this book, come hell or high water. 


Learning to listen to what your gut is telling you is, I believe, a vital skill as a writer. It's what will tell you during revision what is important to you, and what you can toss. It will tell you mid-novel that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and then help you figure out what is stinking up your novel so you can go back to being brilliant. Before making any radical changes though, I suggest you talk with some trusted writer friends who have experiences similar to yours, and for the love of all that is holy, back up your current WIP just in case your self-doubt sucker punches you. 


You all might think I am raving mad, talking about listening to your gut. I just know it's been an invaluable tool for me. And in this case, it saved my novel.


I hope everyone is doing okay during NaNo. Slow and steady wins the race!

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Last night was not very restful. I had a hard time falling asleep, and I woke up at three in the morning from a nightmare. It's vague and fuzzy now, but there was something about a guy who was possessing people and I had to stop him, and save the people he was hurting. There were spirits and demons involved. It doesn't sound like it (nightmare never do) but it was scary. I woke up, certain there was a demon in the room with me.

I got up to use the bathroom, and had to avoid the mirror. I have this weird thing with mirrors. Most of the time, I think nothing of them. They are just there. But after a nightmare I can't look at them, because I am afraid I will see someone standing behind me, or something will reach out and grab me. I NEVER played "Bloody Mary", even as a kid.

Because here's the thing: when you're a writer, you tell yourself stories. Even if you're writing literary fiction, you are still making stuff up. I write fantasy, so believing in what isn't real goes double for me. During the day, when I am rational, I know elves and fairies and ghosts and demons don't exist. At least, I sort of know that. I am willing to concede that there is a possibility there are things out there we don't know about, but I don't actively search for it.

But at three in the morning, when it's pitch black out and no one's awake? That certainty goes straight out the window. No matter what I tell myself as I lay there in bed, I still think there *might* be something under my bed that is going to reach up and grab my ankle. And no amount of rationale will change that.

I think this is a negative side effect to writing. Or being creative in general. I spend so much time thinking about people and events that are a product of my imagination, and believing in them, giving them words and weight, that sometimes after I just wake up, this flexibility in my suspension of disbelief turns out to be a hinderance.

As a result, I am sooooo tired today. The thought of going to work makes me tired. I have a list of things I need to do, and I am doing them, but S-L-O-W-L-Y. I was hoping to be extra productive today, but things aren't looking so great. Unless of course I add to my list of things to do. For example, I already took a shower today. Check. Ate breakfast. Check. Wrote a blog post. Check. Go to work. Check soon enough. I guess if I extend my creativity further, I could add even more things to my list of things to do. Breathe. Check. Brush hair. Check. Get dressed. Check. Read other people's blogs. Check. 


See?! I am feeling more productive already! I guess it's time to do what I actually need to do--work on my notecard outline--though. I am getting so close to being ready, that it's tantalizing me. But yesterday I made chicken pot pie for my parents from scratch. They loved it, but it took longer than I thought it would. 

Hey, I can add to my list! Make dinner for parents; have enough for leftovers today. Check.


What do you guys do when you have bad dreams? Am I the only one who think is has to do with being creative?